Digital Commons Network^™

Buddhism Is More Than Just Meditation: A Cognitive Non-Attachment Training For Social Stress, Robert Klein

Psychology

Buddhism is essentially a cognitive-behavioral intervention where oral teachings and meditation work together to develop nonattachment, a mind-state considered to be the antidote to all human suffering. The present work investigated a twelve-minute cognitive nonattachment induction that taught a wisdom training called the “Three Marks of Existence.” We expected nonattached attitudes to increase following the training. Anxious reactivity to a public speaking task was also expected to be reduced. Results were mixed, and suggested that the training increased agreement with nonattachment world-views, and reduced threat appraisals as hypothesized. However, the training generally did not reduce anxiety measures, although it was …

Aging And Object-Based Inhibition Of Return, Asenath Xochitl Arauza Huether

Psychology

Inhibition of return (IOR) is a cognitive mechanism to bias attention from returning to previously engaged items. While aging models have proposed deficits within select inhibitory domains, older adults have demonstrated preserved IOR functioning in previous studies. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether IOR associated with objects showed the same age patterns as IOR associated with locations. Both young and older adults produced significant location-based IOR in static and dynamic paradigms. In contrast, young adults produced object-based IOR in a dynamic paradigm, whereas older adults failed to produce significant object-based effects. The findings provide partial support …

Belief And Belongingness: Are Supernatural Agents And Forces Social Surrogates?, Taylor Nelson

Psychology

Motivational approaches to the study of supernatural beliefs propose that such beliefs serve psychological functions. I tested the proposal that supernatural agents and forces are sought out as social surrogates to fulfill the need to belong. First, I present preliminary data consistent with the claim that the belongingness motive and deficits in belongingness (i.e., loneliness) are related to supernatural beliefs. Next, I report an experiment testing the supernatural social surrogate proposal. I hypothesized that affirming belongingness would reduce supernatural beliefs and that the relationship between the predictors and supernatural beliefs would weaken if one’s belonging is affirmed. If supernatural beliefs …

The Role Of Distress Tolerance In Cognitive Control Training For Dysphoria, Alisson Nicole Schultz Lass

Psychology

Cognitive Control Training (CCT) is an area of research which has been hypothesized as a way to decrease symptoms of depression. The purpose of this study was to replicate the results found by others using the PASAT, and to examine potential mechanisms behind the effects of CCT, particularly the role of distress tolerance. Seventy-two participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions, a waitlist control, and 2 treatment conditions. Participants in the treatment conditions were given an electronic tablet to practice the attention task over a 2 week period. One condition was paced and time-pressured, the other was self-paced …

Environmental Socialization: A Case Study On Formative Influences, Joseph Herbst

Natural Resources Management

Twenty-first century social-ecologic systems are in the midst of a complex adaptive cycle. There is growing evidence to suggest the existence of a psycho-social developmental process whereby a person becomes situated in an environmental worldview. This process of environmental socialization has received attention in peer-reviewed journals. A case study was developed to see if qualitative methods could yield deeper insight. Depth interviewing and grounded theory analysis were used to explore student’s thoughts on formative influences deemed significant in the development of their own environmental perspective. The qualitative method used in the study was useful in probing the nuance, complexity, and …

Conducting The Coded Message Songs Of Slavery: Context, Connotation, And Performance Preparation, Rebecca Lynn Raber

Music

The coded message songs of slavery are a mysterious and fascinating entity. Within the lyrics of these seemingly innocuous plantation songs are coded messages for escape, messages that provided secret information to enslaved workers on Antebellum plantations. Over the course of more than 250 years of slavery on American soil, countless enslaved Africans found freedom through the use of coded message songs and the Underground Railroad. What are these songs? Which lyrics provided this secret information? How can a study of this music provide a better musical experience for conductors, singers, and listeners? This disquisition offers answers to these important …

Investment Behavior Analysis Based On Tail Risk Management, Yu Sun

Statistics

As behavioral finance is becoming more prevalent in academic area, a study is worth conducting to pinpoint investors’ preference through managing tail risk of asset portfolios. This study investigates investors’ investment behaviors by modeling their investment personalities based on tail risk management. We incorporate CVaR approach to model traditional and non-traditional investment behaviors by reshaping the tails of portfolio return. To be specific, we build model to maximize left-tail CVaR, minimize right-tail CVaR, minimize left-tail CVaR models, and a mixed model that maximize left-tail CVaR and minimize righttail CVaR simultaneously based on various group of rational and irrational investors. Our …

Economic Modeling Of Agricultural Production In North Dakota Using Transportation Analysis And Forecasting, Nimish Laxmikant Dharmadhikari

Transportation Logistics and Finance

Agricultural industry is crucial for the economy; agricultural transportation is an integrated part of that industry. Optimization of the transportation and logistics costs is an important part of the transportation economics. This study focuses on the minimization of the total cost of transportation logistics. Sugar-beet is one of the important crops in the state of North Dakota and there has been sporadic research in the sugar-beet transportation economic modeling. Therefore, this research focuses on the transportation economic modeling of the sugar-beet including yield forecasting to reduce the uncertainty in this process. This study begins with developing a yield forecasting model …

Application Of Data Mining Techniques In Transportation Safety Study, Zijian Zheng

Transportation Logistics and Finance

Most of current studies are based on Generalized Linear Models (GLMs), which require several assumptions. Those assumptions limit GLMs with the nature of data, and jeopardize models’ performance when handling data with complex and nonlinear patterns, high missing values, and large number of input variables with various data types. Data mining models are famous for strong capability of extracting valuable information and detecting complex patterns from large noisy data. However, they are not popular in transportation safety research, because they are criticized to be unable to provide interpretable and practical outputs. In this study, data mining models are tested in …

A Visualization Technique For Course Evaluations And Other Likert Scale Data, Muhammed Saho

Statistics

Course evaluation is one of the primary ways of collecting feedback from students at NDSU. Since almost every student in every course submits one at the end of the semester, it generates a lot of data. The data is summarized into text based reports with emphasis on average rating of each question. At one page per course, analyzing these reports can be overwhelming. Furthermore, it is very difficult to identify patterns in the text reports. We combine heat maps and small multiples to introduce a visualization of the data that allows for easier comparison between courses, departments, etc. We defined …

In Search Of The Final Head Ball: The Case For Eliminating Heading From Soccer,, N. Jeremi Duru

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Soccer is unquestionably the world's most popular sport. Two hundred and eleven countries have national soccer associations, hundreds of millions of people across the globe play recreationally, and Federation Internationale de Football Association's ("FIFA") quadrennial World Cup soccer tournament is unchallenged as the highest profile4 and highest grossing sporting competition on Earth. Notwithstanding its popularity, however, soccer sits at a troubling crossroads as the sport's governing bodies grapple with the impact that the risk of brain injury is having on the game. Soccer is, of course, not alone in this regard. The risk of brain injury exists in all team …

Rehabilitation In Article 14 Of The Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman, Or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment, Claudio Grossman, Nora Sevaass, Felice Gaer

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Persons exposed to torture have suffered serious attacks on their lives, relationships, health, and sense of dignity. The torture they experienced will remain a part of them even if they manage to move ahead and work through the pain. The destructive power of torture affects life on so many levels: mind and body, values and relationships, and the capacity for work and leisure. Providing opportunities to reconstruct lives after torture should be a priority in the international effort to prevent and prohibit torture. International recognition of the right to redress, including rehabilitation for all victims of torture and other cruel, …

Oneself As Another: Hermeneutics And Personality Assessment, Marvin W. Acklin

Archives of Assessment Psychology

The scientific and philosophical background of personality assessment is examined, including review of hermeneutic methods in the human sciences. Following a keyword search and psychological test usage survey, it was concluded that the nomothetic scientific orientation predominates in forensic psychology. A topic debated since the middle 19th century, the triumph of the nomothetic has implications for personality assessment models, interpretive methods, and description of human lives. This paper contextualizes personality assessment in 19th and 20th century hermeneutical philosophy, including the status of the nomothetic/idiographic divide. Hermeneutic philosophy--represented in the work of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Ricoeur--offers rich and …

Inter-Rater Reliability Of The Raphael Projective System (Rps) Of Scoring Projective Drawings, R. Lauren Miller, Ann Marie Paolino, Theresa Ascheman Jones, Alan J. Raphael, Charles Golden

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Purpose: The current study was conducted to examine the interrater reliability of the Raphael Projective System (RPS), a standardized system for the administration, scoring, and interpretation of projective drawings. In anticipation of completion of the comprehensive manual of the RPS, the authors examined the inter-rater reliability of raters who were trained on scoring House, Tree, and Person drawings. Methods: Three of the authors refined the scoring system and reached consensus on scoring for 30 projective drawing test protocols (ten House drawings, ten Tree drawings, and ten Person drawings), which they had independently scored. Five graduate psychology students were trained on …

Leone, Mosticoni, Ianella, Biondi, And Butcher’S (2018) Effort To Compare The Mmpi-2-Rf With The Mmpi-2 Falls Well Short, Yossef S. Ben-Porath, Auke Tellegen

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Leone, Mosticoni, Iannella, Biondi, and Butcher’s (2018) comparison of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-2-RF in a clinical sample falls well short of its goals. On the basis of analyses conducted with a sample of patients, the authors conclude that the MMPI-2-RF is less sensitive to psychopathology and is susceptible to gender bias. However, their study fails to meet basic requirements for sound research methodology and reporting of research findings. The findings reported are inconsistent with or contradict the authors’ conclusions, many of which have already been rebutted in previous publications, which they ignored. Leone et al.’s (2018) discussion fails to acknowledge …

Equivalence Of Remote, Online Administration And Traditional, Face-To-Face Administration Of Woodcock-Johnson Iv Cognitive And Achievement Tests, A. Jordan Wright

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Many children in need do not receive the mental health services they require. This is true with psychoeducational services in schools, where a shortage of school psychologists has been identified. An estimated 15% of all students struggle with attentional or learning difficulties that are unassessed and unaddressed, largely due to problems with access to psychoeducational evaluations. Remote, online psychoeducational evaluations have the potential to decrease this access problem by assisting school psychologists with their evaluation workload. The present study evaluated the equivalence of a remote, online administration procedure for the Woodcock-Johnson IV cognitive and achievement tests with traditional, in-person administration. …

Capturing Naturally Occurring Emotional Suppression As It Unfolds In Couple Interactions, Jordan D. Dworkin, Virginia Zimmerman, Robert J. Waldinger, Marc S. Schulz

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Most research examining the consequences of suppressing emotional expression has focused on either experimentally manipulated and conscious suppression, or self-reported suppression behavior. This study examined suppression as it naturally occurred in couple (n= 105) discussions regarding a challenging topic. A Suppression Index (SI) was created by calculating the difference between continuous self-reports of emotional experience, obtained using cued video recall, and coders’ continuous ratings of expressed emotion. Suppression was common for both men and women, though there was also substantial individual variation. Autocorrelations of the SIwere used to tap Suppressive Rigidity (S_rig), …

Resilience In Caregivers Of Partners With Young Onset Dementia: A Concept Analysis, Karie R. Kobiske, Abir K. Bekhet

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction: Over 200,000 Americans diagnosed with young onset dementia (YOD), dementia diagnosed prior to age 65, are cared for by family members. This can be costly to caregivers’physical and psychological health. Some adapt well to the caregiver role and are said to be resilient. Aim/Question: This paper builds on current understanding of the concept of resilience and applies this to caregivers of partners diagnosed with YOD. Method: Concept analysis. Results: Resilient caregivers exhibit attributes including determination, flexibility, positive thinking, self-efficacy, resourcefulness, social support and spirituality. Discussion: YOD affects caregiver’s health. Much research has been done on interventions for dementia caregivers. …

Factor Structure And Psychometric Properties Of Cognitive-Behavioral Scales In Caregivers Of Persons With Dementia, Abir K. Bekhet, Mauricio Garnier-Villarreal

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Background/Purpose

Caregiving can be costly to dementia caregivers' well-being. Assessing the factor structure and psychometric properties of Cognitive-Behavioral Scales in dementia caregivers is an essential step in addressing the gap in the current state of research. Specifically, it is essential to determine first whether the factorial structure of the three measures used in this study namely, the Positive Thinking Skills Scale, the Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist, and the Zarit Burden Interview are good representation of the data by studying the good model fit. Next, evaluating the reliability of each factor of the three measures used are essential to …

Visits For Depression To Physician Assistants And Nurse Practitioners In The Us, Abiola O. Keller, Roderick S. Hooker, Elizabeth R. Jacobs

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Adolescent Weight Perceptions And Snack Food Portion Estimation, Georgianna Mann, Lauren Woodard Parrish, Jo Jangwooc, Melinda Valliant

Faculty and Student Publications (Open Access)

No abstract provided.

Economic Individualism And Preference Formation, Andrzej Rapaczynski

Faculty Scholarship

This note examines some issues involved in an attempt to go beyond the assumption, long-made by most economists, that people’s preferences are simply to be treated as “given” and that the principle of consumer sovereignty entails a refusal to consider some (or some people’s) revealed preferences as more authoritative than others. The most important break with that assumption has been the development of behavioral economics, which shows that people may not always know what they really want, and that economists have to develop a more critical approach, distinguishing people’s true preferences from those that are merely apparent. While this approach, …

Understanding The Influence Of Sexual Risk Taking, Ethnic Identity, And Family And Peer Support On School Importance Among Hispanic Adolescents, Pauline Garcia-Reid, David T. Lardier, Robert Reid, Ijeoma Opara

Department of Family Science and Human Development Scholarship and Creative Works

Despite the broader academic gains experienced by Hispanic students, who represent the largest minority group in the United States, they remain the least educated of all major ethnic groups, and our understanding of their academic needs and strengths remains woefully inadequate. Therefore, this study examined the risk (e.g., sexual risk taking) and protective factors (e.g., family support, supportive peer networks, and ethnic identity) associated with school importance among Hispanic teens (N = 587) residing in a high-risk, resource poor urban community and the ways in which these relationships vary between adolescent males (46.5%) and adolescent females (53.5%). Schools that are …

Amygdala-Frontal Connectivity Predicts Internalizing Symptom Recovery Among Inpatient Adolescents, Amanda Venta, Carla Sharp, Michelle Patriquin, Ramiro Salas, Elizabeth Newlin, Kaylah Curtis, Philip Baldwin, Christopher Fowler, B Christopher Frueh

Staff and Researcher Publications

Background: The possibility of using biological measures to predict the trajectory of symptoms among adolescent psychiatric inpatients has important implications. This study aimed to examine emotion regulation ability (measured via self-report) and a hypothesized proxy in resting-state functional connectivity [RSFC] between the amygdala and frontal brain regions as baseline predictors of internalizing symptom recovery during inpatient care.

Methods: 196 adolescents (61% female; Mage = 15.20; SD = 1.48) completed the Achenbach Brief Problem Monitor (BPM) each week during their inpatient care. RSFC (n = 45) and self-report data of emotion regulation (n = 196) were collected at baseline.

Results: The …

Sources Of Tech Platform Power, Lina M. Khan

Faculty Scholarship

A handful of tech platforms mediate a large and growing share of our commerce and communications. Over the last year, the public has come to realize that the power these firms wield may pose significant hazards. Elected leaders ranging from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) have expressed alarm at the level of control that firms like Amazon, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Facebook enjoy. In a recent poll, a majority of Americans voiced concern that the government wouldn’t do enough to regulate U.S. tech companies. As the editor of BuzzFeed observed, a “major trend in American …

Student Responses To An Animated Character In Information Literacy Instruction, Jennifer Poggiali

Publications and Research

Purpose: This paper reports on a grant-funded project to create a hand-drawn, custom-made animated character named Jasmyn. Drawing on animation theory, the paper uses qualitative research to investigate student responses to the medium of animation, the character’s design, and three presentation strategies.

Design/methodology/approach: The researchers held three student focus groups to investigate the following research questions: 1. Will students endorse animation as a medium for library instructional videos on the grounds of its entertaining, subversive, or playful qualities? 2. Is Jasmyn designed and8 written in a way that engages students and compels them to respond to her as a character? …

Effect Of Quality Health Care And Support Network On Maternal And Children Outcome In Uganda, Chukwuemeka Ugwu

Master's Theses

About 300,000 women mostly of developing countries die due to pregnancy-related birth complications every year (Smith & Rodriguez. 2015). In Uganda, the maternal death is 1 in every 44 women (State of the World's Mothers' Index 2015, by Save the Children). This places the country as 141 out of 179 by the same ranking. Existing data attributes this anomaly mainly to lack of prompt obstetrics services (Wilunda et al, 2015). Thus, this paper presents empirical evidence of the effect of quality health care and support network on the outcome of a mother and her children during maternity. We employed survey …

Countervisuality As Policy Feedback: A Critical Policy Study On The Symbolic Role Of Visual Culture In Contemporary Antiracist Resistance, Lindsay N. Plott-Buckner

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

This critical interpretive study explores the relationship between public policy and visual culture. Drawing from five areas of research literature on (1) policy feedback theory, (2) the spectacle, (3) art and visual culture, (4) Black feminist theory, (5) and critical philosophies of resistance, images of contemporary antiracist activism are conceptualized as a form of policy feedback. Photographs of Ieshia Evans, Bree Newsome, and a self-portrait by Nona Faustine are reverse searched through Google Images. Utilizing constructivist grounded theory, a collection of publicly available news articles, blogs, and social media content are analyzed to better understand how mass publics engage with …

Risk Of Unintended Pregnancy In Latina Young Adults: The Effect Of Gender Role Beliefs, Acculturation, And Depression, Jessica Block

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the effect of Latina gender role beliefs, or marianismo beliefs, on risk for unintended pregnancy by examining contraceptive method use in Latina young adults. Acculturation and depression were also examined as moderators of the association between marianismo and contraceptive method choice, as well as separately for their effects on contraceptive use. Unmarried, nulliparous Latina women aged 18-24 (N = 142) were recruited through online social media platforms. Data were collected in the United States in July 2017. Logistic regression analyses were performed to distinguish between women who utilized more effective v. less effective contraceptive methods in the …

Focus Groups To Increase The Cultural Acceptability Of A Contingency Management Intervention For American Indian And Alaska Native Communities, Katherine A. Hirchak, Emily Leickly, Jalene Herron, Jennifer Shaw, Jordan Skalisky, Lisa G. Dirks, Jaedon P. Avey, Multiple Additional Authors

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Introduction

Many American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) people seek evidence-based, cost-effective, and culturally acceptable solutions for treating alcohol use disorders. Contingency management (CM) is a feasible, low-cost approach to treating alcohol use disorders that uses “reinforcers” to promote and support alcohol abstinence. CM has not been evaluated among AI/AN communities. This study explored the cultural acceptability of CM and adapted it for use in diverse AI/AN communities.

Methods

We conducted a total of nine focus groups in three AI/AN communities: a rural reservation, an urban health clinic, and a large Alaska Native healthcare system. Respondents included adults …